


for the living know

by too_much_in_the_sun



Category: Dream Cycle - H. P. Lovecraft
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Horror, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Slow Burn, The Dreamlands (Cthulhu Mythos), Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:54:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24452440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/too_much_in_the_sun/pseuds/too_much_in_the_sun
Summary: Randolph Carter comes home from the war. Harley Warren is there to meet him. And he has plans.So does the god Nyarlathotep.If this works, Carter thinks,I will see Him again – the messenger Nyarlathotep. And what will He think, when I intrude on His domain again?And he seems to hear again the god’s mellow, silken voice, the words he said to Carter long ago:Pray to all space that you may never meet me in my thousand other forms. Farewell, Randolph Carter, and beware...
Relationships: Randolph Carter/Harley Warren
Kudos: 6





	for the living know

**Author's Note:**

> That summary quote does appear in this fic, just not for a few chapters. Sorry to disappoint.
> 
> I started writing this fic immediately after I finished [a different fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17524934) in which Randolph Carter played a large role. You don't have to read that fic, but it did get me started thinking about what happened in Carter's life between coming home from the war and Harley Warren's death. 
> 
> So I started writing this. 
> 
> This first chapter is almost entirely setup; I can't promise the second chapter will be posted soon, but things do start to pick up from there.

The first thing Harley Warren says, when Randolph Carter comes home from the war, is this:

“You look simply dreadful. Welcome home.”

“It’s good to see you too,” Carter returns, as he hands his dripping overcoat to Parks. The low, leaden clouds had finally broken during his drive back from the train station, and even the short walk up to the house has been wet enough to be irritating. It is hardly as bad as the conditions he faced overseas, but, he reflects, it is a less-than-ideal homecoming.

“How are things in Boston?” Warren says, as the two of them walk down the hall, past the dark, silent parlor and dining room.

“Same as always,” Carter answers. “Martha’s well enough for her age - to hear her talk, you’d think they knocked down the home place last week and not twenty years ago.”

“You’ve said as much,” Warren says, opening the door to the library. “It’s good to have you home again, old man.”

The smell of the library - old parchment, mingled with sandalwood incense - is just as Carter remembers it, but the light seems dimmer, the room itself more cramped. No matter. “Yes,” he says, “it’s good to be home.”

Warren returns to his desk like a tamed hawk to its perch. Centered on the blotter, a decaying illuminated manuscript lies open, its pages softly limp like the limbs of a small dead thing, surrounded by scraps of notepaper covered in Warren’s neat copperplate hand. “I don’t suppose your Arabic has improved while you’ve been away,” Warren says cheerfully, bending over the manuscript, his shadow falling on the pages. He looks like a carrion bird returning to the corpse on which it is feeding, surrounded by tufts of loose fur.

Carter swallows hard. “I’m afraid not,” he says through lips gone suddenly numb. “My German is much better than it was, though.”

“I suppose I’ll keep you around then,” Warren says playfully, peering closely at the graceful lines of text before him. “Did you have a chance to eat? I’m afraid I’ve already dined.”

“I have,” Carter says - a limp sandwich and watery soup at an automat by the train station in Boston, late that morning. By all rights he ought to be hungry again by now, but he finds that he is not - as a matter of fact, his appetite has fled him entirely.

Warren looks him over with a calculating eye. “I believe Sally’s got an aspic chilling in the icebox - chicken salad, if that tempts you.”

“I wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee, if you can spare it.”

“For a dear friend, certainly,” Warren says, taking a fresh sheet of paper and beginning to write in an alphabet Carter does not recognize. “Just ring for it, and George will make a fresh pot for you.”

Carter settles into an armchair by the east window. Lost as the Dreamlands might be to him, he does still experience the sort of mundane dreams to which other people seem to be bound. In those pale, shadowy fantasies, he has returned to this place, this room, this man, again and again, rehearsing his homecoming much as an actor does his lines... and now that he has returned here in the waking world, it all seems pathetically lacking in substance. The books appear faded, their leather binding insubstantial; the light is weak and inadequate, but the shadows it creates are purely ordinary. Even Warren seems not to measure up to the memory of him that Carter kept sacred for so long.

There is something missing here.

* * *

It is known by both scientists and mystics alike that all life on earth must sleep -- and thus, all life on earth must dream, for dreams are the purpose of sleep.

How, then, does one explain the continuation of Randolph Carter’s earthly life after his loss of the Dreamlands?

The answer is simple. All life must sleep, and therefore dream, but the Dreamlands are open only to certain forms of earthly life, such as the human being and the domestic cat. Other creatures enjoy only the type of dreams one may call “ordinary”: this is the type of dream that a dog has, when he dreams of chasing rabbits; it is the type of dream which comes to most adult human beings, unless they have a particular gift for dreaming. These common dreams only rarely descend to even the highest part of the Dreamlands, and for many years Carter had avoided them. Why should he occupy his valuable time with prosaic dreams of earthly work and earthly life when he could be roaming the Dreamlands instead?

But now he had lost access to those lands of phantasy, and found himself restricted to the same mundane dreams that the lowly dog knows, the same weak reflections of waking life. Yet although he was barred from the Dreamlands, and had been for some years, his dreams still borrowed from their imagery, and from his memories of adventures there, sapped of their strength though they were.

He had grown used to these pallid echoes, and had ceased to hope that the mystic gates of the Dreamlands would ever open for him again. While still overseas, he had even welcomed these flabby facsimiles for the escape they brought him, but now that he had come home, and found himself once more in friendly surroundings, the taste of them soured in his mouth.

The shadows failed to satisfy, as closely as they sometimes mimicked the Dreamlands of his recollection. That first night, he passed from dream to dream, seeking something he could not quite name, and forever unsatisfied by the lack of it.

Randolph Carter walked the homely cobbled streets of Ulthar, and sat long in the shade of a great elm at the edge of the grassy common, in whose shadow a pair of sleek, well-fed black kittens gamboled. And though he was pleased by this charming scene, at last he arose and said, “No, this cannot be Ulthar – for where is the old priest Atal, who once was the innkeeper’s son?” And he seemed to wake, but passed rather into another dream.

In the deserted streets of Dylath-Leen, in the long shadows of its looming basalt towers, Carter wandered through an unending early evening, and all around him was perfect stillness. And he tarried there a while before saying, “This is not the city I know – where are the merchants, and where are the black galleys I know?” Again he seemed to wake, and again he passed into a new dream.

In Celephaïs, he passed several pleasant hours with his old friend King Kuranes, in his crystal Palace of the Seventy Delights, whose halls echo always with dreamy, languid music. And it was with regret that Carter said at last, “This is not my friend, Kuranes, and this is not the kingdom he rules – for Kuranes left this place long ago.”

And the rose-crystal Palace around him faded away at once, and for the first time in years, Randolph Carter awoke in his own bed, in his own room, in the house of Harley Warren. In the dim moonlight, it seemed a sinister place indeed – every corner clotted with inky, malevolent shadows, the patterned wallpaper seeming to leer with malign faces – and it was long indeed before sleep came to him again.

* * *

Carter wakes late the next morning – later than Warren, anyway, judging from the smell of coffee in the air – and the weak late-fall sunshine makes the room around him look like a pale memory of itself. Which seems to be a theme of his life as late, he thinks bitterly; he is surrounded by things that don’t quite live up to his memories of them. His dreams of the night before are already fading away, but there remains a sense of unease at the back of his head, aching like a bruise.

He forces himself to get up, to bathe in the bathroom down the hall, to shave and dress and go downstairs. He feels as though he is still asleep, as though at any moment he will wake up back in France, and the war will still not be over. His body may be mostly present and accounted for, but the animating principle, the incorporeal thing that makes him Randolph Carter, is still somewhere far away.

Warren has lingered over his breakfast; today the weather is just warm enough for him to eat on the screened-in porch, though shreds of fog still linger at the edges of the lawn.

“Good morning, Carter,” Warren says, looking up from his newspaper. “Sleep well?”

“Well enough.” He sits down opposite Warren. The sunlight falling across the table holds no warmth.

There is an empty mug on Carter’s side of the table; Warren fills it with coffee from the carafe and smiles apologetically. “Sugar’s a little hard to find these days. You’ll have to drink it black.”

“Warren,” Carter says, sipping cautiously, “I’m just grateful to have coffee at all.”

“That’s fair, I suppose; my father used to tell all sorts of stories about the stuff they were passing off as coffee during the war.”

“You’ve mentioned. How goes the work?”

“Well enough. You haven’t heard from de Marigny?”

“No, I haven’t – last I heard, he was going down to New Orleans. Some kind of family business.”

“Naturally.” Warren sighs. “He sounds like quite the personality for one so young.”

“You’ve got that right. I’ve never met anyone else with such a wealth of Creole lore rattling around in his head – the stories he could tell would turn your hair white.”

“I look forward to meeting him, then,” Warren says. He looks Carter over, then passes him a half-empty plate of toast. “I know you don’t usually eat breakfast, but I can’t let good bread just go to waste. Here.”

“You’re trying to win me over,” Carter says. He takes the toast. “What is it?”

“I never could fool you,” Warren mutters. “I’ve got a medieval German manuscript I want you to look over, and I’d rather you didn’t faint from hunger.”

“You’re trying to buy my affection with toast and coffee,” Carter says warmly.

“I know what you like,” Warren says. “You’ll do it?”

“I’d be delighted.”


End file.
